Chiaroscuro Post Approval Guide
So, you've been approved! You've a brand-new character concept ahead of you, and 35000 XP burning in your pocket. What do you do? Well, I'll give you a few tips! Hop through the RP exit and begin! You can also check out Getting Off the Ground, a guide that contains a lot of nice tips for starting off that I may have missed here. Skills First thing: Noble or Freelander, that XP you have is very important. Make sure you spend it wisely in fleshing out your character, as there will be no re-dos and beyond the monthly voting cycle no easy way to get such an amount of XP again. You can raise a skill using +raise to ''' with ''' being the level you'd like to raise. 1 for Terrible, 2 for Poor, 3 for Mediocre, 4 for Fair, 5 for Good, 6 for Great, 7 for Superb. To raise a skill above 'Good', you can try +practice '. This will roll your Intelligence, Willpower, and the skill you want to raise. If they all measure out above your skill level, you'll succeed and your skill level will raise. If they don't, you'll have to try again. This also costs a lot of XP. Fair is the benchmark for successes on rolls. Fair would be competent, Good would be, well Good, better than competent, Great would be professional, expert, requiring a significant amount of focus and time and Superb would denote a kind of Mastery only years of experience and dedication could produce. For Combat skills, you're required to talk to staff about the justification of a Superb, and you're limited to two Superb combat skills for the sake of realism and anti-twinking. The same goes for Superb attributes, any Superbs requiring justification to the staff. Check out '+sinfo for information on all that. You can also browse +skills to check out all the skill groups, +skills ' to look at the skills in those groups, and '+sinfo ''' for specific information and the cost of a skill. Go check out Attributes for some better information on attributes. Trainers Trainers are NPCs that, well, train you. Some are available to the public, most aren't. They allow you to raise skills at a reduced experience rate and also raise skills above Good without the need to +practice. There is one public trainers on 'The Grid', which is in the training yard in Lightholder Crossroads right where you pop out, and it trains Horseback Riding, Foraging, Athletics, Acrobatics, and Reading. You can '''look at a trainer to see how to access the trainer help files and get more information about the trainer. For crafters, if you make at least Professional on the +experts list, you can get 1 free guild invite to the guild of your choice. Guilds have trainers that train a variety of skills important to the profession, and they also have MUDQuests that cost less minutes and return more craftlevels. For more information on crafting, check out this very informative Guide to Crafting. Getting Around One way to get around is, well, by simply walking. You can go through distance exits by typing +walk ' or '+run '. Running is faster than walking, but also bogs down on your hunger. There are also two types of 'look' in the game, '+look ' and '''look '. +look allows you to check out 'virtual' objects, such as various items around the grid or craftable items or even players. The regular 'look' command works on players and horses and other items, like stables. So, if you're trying to look at something and it won't work, try +looking. You can also substitute a VObject's name in +look with its' item number for that specific item. Automated Systems There's a variety of ways to get around Fastheld. The most obvious automated way is the carriage system. There is a single carriage system for each district, and an Interdistrict Carriage System. You can get pretty much anywhere using these systems. The former system costs 5 Imperials and will take you anywhere in the district, or to an interdistrict carriage stop. The interdistrict carriages cost 50 imperials, and will take you between districts. You find carriages by a prompt appearing at the bottom when you enter a room, usually '''+carriage/hire. This will summon a carriage to you unless there's already one there. Just enter carriage to get in. Follow the directions in the carriage to use it. Just leave to exit the carriage once it arrives. Every carriage ride takes 5 minutes, regardless of location. There's also a riverboat system in some locations, they don't require an interdistrict system and work exactly as carriages do. Horses A more manual way to get around is through horses. This is a lot faster than walking, and it allows you to go anywhere you want pretty much. You can get a stock horse by going to popular stables, such as the one in Lightholder Crossroads. They typically cost 1000 Imperials, and although they aren't as fast and require more care than Fast Horses through RP Rewards, they are much better than walking. There are stables in pretty much every township, and you can type look stables for more information when you're in the room with one. +stable/list will list the horses for sale, if any. They're ranked by Speed and Stamina. The lower the number, the better. Curious about how the horse you're going to buy looks like? Just look stable's '. When you have a horse (Check out '+help horses for more advanced stuff), there's a few things to keep in mind. First and foremost is a horse's hunger. Typing +checkhunger ' while mounted will tell you how full your horse is. If you go too long without feeding your horse, your horse will die, and that's not too fun. If you're at a stable, typing '+stable ' while dismounted will feed your horse automatically. It also costs 50 Imperials to stable a horse, and it's a good idea to stable your horse while you're not using him so no-one steals it or he doesn't wander off. If you're far from a stable, you can also '+craft wild hay anywhere to find hay for your horse. It's expensive in minutes (+consider wild hay), but it might be all you have. It's also a good idea to have at least fair in horseback riding before you attempt to ride a horse, or it might toss you off and hurt you. You can get around on your horse by using +walk ', '+trot ', or '+gallop '. Galloping is the fastest, but also depletes hunger far quicker than walking. You can maneuver your horse through normal exits by typing '+walk ' while mounted. Trotting or galloping doesn't work with normal directions. Common Sense One thing to keep in mind while exploring is that even though you can do it with code, it's very rarely a good idea to do something ridiculous just because the code lets you. Like...going into the sewers without a lantern, trying to go along the Aegis Wall that surrounds the /entirety/ of Fastheld, bringing your horse into a building not suitable for horses, or going into people's houses or keeps and taking their things without any IC cause or possibility. It's a very good idea to avoid these things, because if you do them, you'd better be prepared to deal with the consequences. Hunger and Stat Conditions You'll notice on your '+sheet something called Hunger. Your hunger maxes out at 1440, and every ten minutes you're on the grid, it'll decrease by ten. When you reach below 900 hunger, you'll get a -1 modifier on your +sheet. This means that /all/ rolls - Crafting, MUDQuests, anything skill or attribute related - will be decreased by 1. If you reach below 300 Hunger, it becomes -2. Because of this, you should make sure you keep up your hunger if you intend to do anything skill-related. You can do this by going to many of the cooks and NPC vendors around the grid. Various items of food and drink restore different amounts of hunger. The quality of the item also factors in to the amount of hunger restored. To eat, just +get ' and then '+consume ' if it's edible. If you're too far from a vendor, you can also '+craft forage to restore your hunger. You can also +craft forage much like wild hay for low-quality food for 100 minutes each anywhere you like (+consider forage). Again, it's a weak substitute for tavern food but it might be all you have. Something else that can effect your stats is HP loss. Your HP is shown in the upper-right corner of your +sheet. Various things can knock down your HP. Failing MUDQuests and events where you get wounded and your HP is deducted by referee appropriate to the wound, for example. There's a couple ways to remedy this. One way is to find a healer, an NPC located in most township crossroads, and look ' much like you might any other NPC, which will provide commands. Typing '+heal will revive you roughly 50 HP, and will deduct some minutes and a lot of hunger. You won't be allowed to use a healer for another 24 hours. Another solution is to use the +sleep command. This costs about 420 or 480 minutes, but you can repeat it within reason and will usually take care of minor wounds. However, it can heal anywhere from 1 to 50 HP, so it's a little expensive on the minutes but a bit quicker than using a healer. Useful Commands Here I'm going to be listing a sizable list of commands or tips not immediately obvious when you log into the MUSH. We have a wide variety of helpful help files (Go figure!) and commands scattered throughout Chiaroscuro that are a big help when doing certain things. *'look ' - This may be fairly obvious, but if you see an NPC and you have no idea what it's for, there's a good chance looking at it will answer that particular paradox. *'+help' - This lets you access the +help directory, which lists a wide variety of Chiaroscuro-specific MUSH commands you can check out. *'+sinfo' - This contains the help files for FUDGE, our skill system. Nearly anything you want to know about the technical aspects of that will be hidden away inside those help files. *'+gossip/help' - The system governing the IC gossip that generates in taverns all over Fastheld. *'+library' - A variety of help files regarding IC theme and laws. *'+calendar' - This lists a calendar of events that both staff and players can use to schedule events so that everyone else can take notice of them. *'+craft/list' or +craft/list ' - This lists the vast array of objects in Chiaroscuro's virtual object system. You can use '+consider ' to learn more about specific items. *'help @channel - Help files concerning the various commands to be done with Chiaroscuro's global channels, such as Public and Newbie. You can use @chan/list to view the list of channels along with @chan/on ' and '@chan/off ' respectively to both join and leave channels. You can also use '+silence to 'gag' all channels you have on, which will cause messages to cease without making you leave a channel or lose your settings, and it only lasts for the duration of your current session on Chiaroscuro. +noisy will, alternatively, ungag all channels. *'who/title ' - This allows you to set your title on the 'who' list. Check out +help who/title for further information. *'+playlook' - When a room's too full or if you just want to look at the players in the room, this lets you see them all in a handy list. It will also show a player's +title if they have one set. To do that, simply type +title me=. It only shows up on +playlook, to my knowledge. *'+look ' - Again, fairly obvious, but the difference between looking at a player and +looking at one is that '+look' shows all the items a player has equipped along with their description while 'look' does not. *'+plook ' - Using +look ', you can then actually look at the description of a player's gear or items with this command. If you want to show someone something you don't have equipped, using the '+show = command will allow that person to then use +plook on that object. *'+lookuid' - This allows you to check out a room's VObjects by their specific numbers, along with the room's weight limit and header limit. *'+time' - This lists the current IC time and date. *'+weather' - This lists the current IC weather. *'+rel/help' - This lists the commands in our relationship system. This allows players to ICly rate other players. The first time a player rates you, you get 200 XP! This carries over to other players that rate you afterward as well. *'+career/help' - A simple system that lets you set your IC profession and allow others to see it, along with browse others. *'+zone/help' - This allows you to set your Time-Zone, along with see other players who have set theirs. *'+kudos' - Gives a list of staffers who've gotten 'kudos' for their work. To give a staffer kudos, just +kudos '''. *+vote/help''' - Our voting system. After or during RP, it's usually considered polite to vote for someone. At the end of each month, the votes cycle and you get a certain amount of XP depending on how many votes you receive, more for commented ones. It's usually the primary way of building up XP to flesh out your character. *'where' - For tracking down RP, there's really no more useful command! Simply type this in and you'll get a list of where RPers are and how many are in certain rooms. *'+pay =' - This allows you to give another player imperials. You can also transfer crafting minutes by using the +transfermin = command. *'+finger ' - This lets you check out another player's personal information page. You can set your own values by checking out +help +finger. category:Chiaroscuro